by Lyndsay Faye
“With respect, sir, you can’t find Mr. Holmes without even a notion of where to look.”
“He may be in desperate need of our assistance!”
“We can hardly provide him that without any idea where he is.”
“I can at least determine he is not nearby.”
“Not without violating the Yard’s procedure, sir.”
“I do not think that, even at this dark eleventh hour, we need entertain any notion of violating the procedure of the Yard,” said a familiar sardonic voice.
“Holmes!” I cried, whirling around in relief. There he stood, not five yards away, holding himself in a peculiarly stiff manner as he slowly advanced. “The killer—did you encounter him? Did he disappear?”
“I am afraid the answer to both questions is yes,” my friend replied, and then, taking another step, he seemed to suffer a loss of balance and staggered slightly.
“Dear God, Holmes, what has happened?” I rushed to his side and grasped his arm, and was all the more troubled when he did not protest but leaned on me heavily.
“Help me get him inside,” I ordered the constable.
“Thank you, Watson, I believe you and I can manage it. Although, perhaps, the ‘inside’ to which you refer ought to be somewhat private.”
One glance through the windows of the boisterous men’s club, confined to their quarters for questioning and gesticulating wildly, was enough to convince me Holmes was right, and I led my friend instead to the building on the south side of the enclosure, which I had come to understand was called Dutfield’s Yard. In the hallway between two families’ living quarters, Holmes lowered himself onto a filthy stoop, and in the better light I finally caught sight of the massive bloodstain seeping across his right shoulder.
“For the love of God, Holmes, if I had seen this, I should not have allowed you to walk under your own power more than two paces,” I cried, carefully pulling off his overcoat and his evening jacket, both of which were saturated with blood.
“I’d anticipated as much,” he murmured, wincing only occasionally as I furthered my attempts to expose the actual wound. “I am relieved to see you well, by the way. You were dealt a considerable blow.”
I threw off my greatcoat and began tearing apart my own dinner jacket, which I knew to be relatively sanitary, with Holmes’s pocketknife. “It was nothing. My own carelessness. Drink this,” I directed, handing him my flask.
Holmes took it from me with an unsteady hand. “I have seldom myself encountered so fleet or agile an opponent.”
“I wish to hear no explanations, nor do I wish you, in strict point of fact, to speak at all.” I marveled at the forceful injunctions I was laying upon my friend, whose total authority, outside of a medical emergency, I would never have challenged.
“No doubt you are right, Doctor. But allow me to enlighten the constable here, whose testimony may be called upon by the Yard in our own absence.”
“Briefly, then,” I growled. “What happened?”
“This fellow couldn’t hold a candle to the devil when in a tight corner. He ran off in the direction of some deserted warehouse byways, I imagine to prevent my shouting to any passersby to help me stop him. He knows these streets like the back of his hand, and I admit he had the advantage of me, for it has been months since I had a case here and one or two new gates and boarded-up alleys caught me by surprise. We had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile when he darted into a maze of passages. I made every effort to keep him in sight, for we both knew that once he had shaken me off, I would never regain the trail. Finally I did lose the culprit, or thought I did.”
“Brace yourself a moment,” I directed, pressing a hastily constructed compress to Holmes’s shoulder. He turned even a shade paler but made no sound.
“I came to a very narrow crossroads of dripping stone corridors,” Holmes continued. “He appeared to have turned a corner, and as both the east and the westerly branches turned yet again within a few yards, my only option seemed to be mere guesswork.”
“You never guess.”
“No,” he acknowledged, with the hint of a smile, “nor did I in this case. I listened. I could no longer hear him running. Soon I realized that the creature could have made his escape through a door and out the back entrance, which would explain the lack of audible footsteps. In any event, I could not wait indefinitely, so after a brief perusal of the area, I grudgingly turned back the way I had come.
“It was as I passed the lintel of a deep doorway that the glint of a knife caught my eye, and the unfortunate incident occurred which you are working to correct. He’d stopped just before the crossroads, not after, and I curse my own stupidity for not having noted the absence of footfalls a moment before. I am possessed of quite rapid defensive reflexes, however, and diverted the blow effectively.”
“You are very seriously injured, Holmes!”
“As the knife was aimed at my throat, you will concede I could have done worse. In any event, before I could rally, he was off again. I followed him, then began to feel I was not at my best and made my way back here.”
“Indeed, you are hardly at the top of your form,” I agreed, finishing the final knot of a makeshift brace and thanking my stars that in Afghanistan I had frequently done without proper medical supplies. “That is all I can construct for the moment. Slip your arm into this sling and we are off to hospital.”
“Yes to the former and no, I think, to the latter. There is work still to be done. Have you any cigarettes about you? I’ve lost my case.”
I opened my mouth to protest and closed it again, knowing I could no more drag Sherlock Holmes away from a murder investigation than command the world to spin in the opposite direction. Constable Lamb, who had been taking notes, rose to his feet as I passed my friend a cigarette and struck him a match.
“By the way, Mr. Holmes, how came you to suspect something was amiss?”
“Watson did not tell you? A pony on the street reared up and refused to approach the passage.”
“Many ponies are skittish and dislike entering new territory if it is dark.”
“Yes, but this pony was going home. Its master’s reins lay slack in his lap; therefore, the pony stopped upon seeing something unusual which it did not like.”
“I see,” said the constable, somewhat dubiously, I thought with irritation. “And the murderer—would you describe him?”
Holmes closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. “The damnable luck is that I never once caught a glimpse of his face. He had wrapped himself about the neck and mouth and ran with his head down. He wore an overcoat, British cut, dark material, heavy shoes, and a worn cloth hat. He was clutching a parcel wrapped in newspaper, not heavy, under his left arm. Did you see him clearly, Watson?”
I somberly indicated I had not.
“So, Mr. Holmes, you and your friend here maintain that, although you confronted this fellow on two separate occasions this very night, you would be unable to identify him? I mean to say, it seems very unlikely, does it not?”
“Well, Officer,” my friend replied, crushing the remainder of his cigarette underfoot, “I suppose I must ask whether you find it likely that a man would take up tearing apart street women as a hobby. We appear to have quit the realm of likelihood, have we not? Come, we are losing time. Where strength has failed us, let us see what we can accomplish through reason alone.”
CHAPTER NINE The Double Event
It must have been well past two by the time we approached the grimy passageway where the body remained. Holmes looked ghastly but frenziedly determined. The constable frequently attempted to catch my eye, I suspected with the idea of removing Holmes from the scene, but he met with a stony and unflinching profile.
“Has anything been touched?”
“We have searched the surroundings for accomplices. The scene remains as it was when the Yard took possession.”
It is perhaps irrelevant, however pressing it seemed to me at the time, to say I had developed a headac
he the likes of which I had never before experienced. In my dazed state, I failed to observe my companion’s machinations with any exactitude until he approached the constable with fiery resolve in his slate grey eyes.
“The deceased is between forty and forty-five years old, though hard living has made her age more difficult to ascertain. She is a smoker, she went with her killer willingly into this byway, she makes occasional use of a padlock, she is not an absolute drunkard, she had experienced more than her share of violence before this event, and she consumed a bunch of grapes with the man who killed her. He, by the by, is right-handed, five foot seven, intimately acquainted with the district, and an Englishman.”
Constable Lamb blinked once and then narrowed his eyes. “In the absence of my superiors, I must record the evidence behind your…assertions, sir.” He rested his case, seemingly pleased by his own propriety.
“Must you indeed?” Holmes said lightly. “She is a smoker, because she retains in her hand a packet of cachous.* She went with her killer willingly because she would have dropped them had she fled. In addition, I happen to have seen this woman some little time ago at a pub, and she was not then wearing a red rose with white maidenhair fern pinned to her jacket. The killer courted her briefly—you may observe the grape stalk yourself just beside the body—and led her into this alleyway. She or someone she knows must own a padlock, for what other lock could possibly fit the key I have discovered upon her? She once before was the victim of a violent individual who tore an earring from her lobe, and were she an utter drunk, she would doubtless by now have pawned one of her two combs.”
“I don’t see what’s so dashed clever about any of that,” muttered Constable Lamb, jotting down notes as quickly as he was able.
“Yes, I would be very much surprised to learn you could see anything at all.”
“Er…,” faltered the constable. “Yes, Mr. Holmes. If you would just wait for my superiors—”
“I should be all too gratified if you had any, but I fear—”
“They are approaching, I think, sir.”
Constable Lamb was correct. A very distraught Inspector Lestrade bore down upon us, nearly at a run. Behind him stood a hansom cab as well as a police carriage emitting further reinforcements from the Yard.
“Sherlock Holmes himself!” the trim inspector snarled, clearly delighted at the opportunity to vent his fury. “I have no reason to question why you are here. I am grateful—indeed, deeply grateful. For if you were not here, how would I go about explaining two murders in one night? Two murders, all within the space of a half mile!
Who could explain such a thing if not Sherlock Holmes, the crack private theorist?”
“Two murders certainly demands an explanation,” my friend replied, but I would be guilty of perjury were I not to report that he started visibly at the news, while I inhaled an unabashed gasp of amazement.
“What the devil has happened to your arm?”
“Return, if you will, Lestrade, to the scintillating topic of double murder,” Holmes shot back bitingly, his deeply rooted nonchalance shattering beneath the force of his alarm.
“Oh, it is of considerable interest, without a doubt,” sneered Lestrade. “Two murders certainly, to the minds of the official force, grow in consideration if they are committed within an hour of each other, not to mention a bloody twenty minutes’ walk!”
“Oh, yes?” was all my friend managed to stake upon a reply.
“You may ‘oh, yes’ all you like, Mr. Holmes, but you must know perfectly well that the murder you are presently investigating is neither the more revolting nor the more pressing of the two.”
Doubting my companion’s capacity for speech, I interjected, “We discovered this crime in progress. What has the killer done since we interrupted him?”
Lestrade looked as if he were about to swallow his own head, such was his confidence in Sherlock Holmes’s omniscience. “Don’t set yourselves against my nerves,” he snapped. “You mean to tell me you’ve heard nothing of the second victim this evening? Nothing of the evisceration, nor the cutting of her face, not to mention the intestines smeared all over her,” he continued, with ominous calm, “nor the other atrocities visited upon her person, which so help me God I will wrest from you the truth of if it is the last thing I do!”
“Lestrade,” my friend protested, “I promise you I know nothing of which you speak, but I will immediately place myself in a cab in the hopes of assisting you. Where did this second event take place?”
“Holmes, I cannot allow—” I began, but at that very instant, as my friend set off toward the vehicle, his iron strength at last failed him and he clutched at the window of the cab for support.
“We are taking you to hospital, and I will not hear another word on the subject,” I swore.
“Hospital! Confound it all, what has happened to him?” begged Lestrade.
“He pursued the killer and was the victim of a murderous attack. I do not like to think what will happen if he exerts himself an instant longer. Driver, you are to proceed to London Hospital!”
“I believe that Baker Street would be preferable, driver,” Holmes called out, as I half lifted him into Lestrade’s hansom. I made as if to join him.
“You are forbidden to accompany me.”
“Why on earth should I be?” I demanded, wounded to the quick.
“You are going to the site of the second killing. You are taking Miss Monk, whose eyes are invaluable. The two of you will record everything you see, and you will tell me of it when we meet again. See that Miss Monk comes to no harm.” During these instructions, he paused intermittently to gather the fortitude to speak, which did nothing to calm my fears.
“I am to safeguard Miss Monk while you may be—”
“Of course not. You are to lead a murder investigation whilst I am recovering. All caution, Watson. Drive on!” he cried, and I stood there as the hansom cantered off into the darkness, leaving only myself, a hysterical inspector, various constables, and the intrepid Miss Monk, who had just emerged from the men’s club composed and resolute.
“Is that Mr. Holmes?” she asked as his cab pulled away.
“Yes,” I said shortly. “He is not well. There has been another murder.”
Her hand flew to her mouth, but she immediately recovered her self-possession. “Then you and I had best leg it over or there’ll be hell to pay.”
As distraught as I was, I had no doubt that Miss Monk was in the right. “Lestrade, where is the other crime scene?”
“Just west of here in Mitre Square,” Lestrade replied, still gazing with an expression of ill-disguised panic at the point where Holmes’s hansom had disappeared. “Inspector Thomas has arrived, so I can take you there myself. I must warn you, however, the Yard has no jurisdiction. The murder was committed within the City of London.”
The central pivot of the eastern metropolis, mirrored by the City of Westminster in the West-end, the City of London was limited to a single square mile of ground, safeguarded not by Scotland Yard but by their own small company of police under the authority of the Corporation of the City of London. However many individuals within that force Holmes had dealings with, I knew not a soul, and I gratefully accepted Lestrade’s offered escort.
“Let us be off,” said I, with the roughness that is born of deep apprehension. “We cannot lose any more time.”
“One moment,” replied Lestrade with a wondering glance toward Miss Monk. “Who the devil is this young person? Do you live in these buildings?”
“My name is Mary Ann Monk, sir,” she stated. “I am in the employ of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
The inspector raised his eyes heavenward and shook his head, but to his credit he did no more. “No doubt you are, miss. No doubt you are. But I warn you, Doctor—this young lady is to be presented as an associate of Mr. Holmes, not of Scotland Yard, if she’s presented at all. My head would be in a basket by morning. Very well, into the carriage all, and back to Mitre Square. I hope you�
�ve the stomach for it, Doctor: there’s a level of hell made especially for this bastard, or there’s no justice in Creation. Of that, at least, I’m sure.”
We drove westward along Commercial Road and then down Whitechapel High Street to the ancient core of Her Majesty’s wide realm. No one spoke a word, for Holmes’s absence had cast a greater pall even than the news of the second murder. Setting aside my severe anxiety for my friend, the Whitechapel killer had proven himself to be the most fearsome menace ever to strike terror into the hearts of the populace. What powers could we expect to set against him without Holmes? I had never in my life been placed in such a false position, but I set my teeth and determined to do my utmost, whatever was required.
We none of us had long to worry, for it was a mere five minutes’ journey. Stopping the carriage on Duke Street, we descended and passed the Great Synagogue, ducking into a small, covered opening. When we emerged in the wide square, we found a somber group of City Police surrounding the body, obscuring it from our immediate view. She lay in front of a row of empty cottages, with blank gaping windows and the creeping tendrils of weeds hastening their decay.
A tall, actively built man with sharp eyes and a military bearing, dressed in fashionably cut plain clothes, turned at the sound of our footsteps.
“This is a murder investigation,” he proclaimed. “You must step outside the square to avoid disturbing evidence.”
“I am Inspector Lestrade of the Metropolitan force.” Lestrade proffered his hand rather uncertainly. “Major Henry Smith, is it not? To tell the truth, sir, we are investigating another murder committed on Berner Street, with all signs of it having been the work of the same party.”
Major Smith emitted a low whistle. “By George, Inspector, you astonish me. And you are?” he asked, turning to me.
“Dr. John Watson. I was there when the event occurred.”
“Your name is known to me, Dr. Watson. You say you were there—you interrupted the murderer at his work?”
“That is correct.”
“Then the man is in custody?”